Read Online Black Irish by Stephan Talty - Free Book Online Page B

stools.
    “Back in Buffalo, maybe. But not here.”
    He pointed straight down at the wooden bar. Back in the County, he meant.
    They shook hands and the touch started a third rail of memory. Weekend nights in Cazenovia Park. A shiver ran down her back.
    “You always keep this place so cold?” she said to cover it up.
    “If I didn’t, the old ones would pass out,” he said, nodding to the two men whispering over amber-colored drinks. Both had heavy wool coats on, even in the bar, and one had some kind of blanket across his lap.
    “And I’m always hot,” he added. “Why pay the gas company?”
    “You were always cheap.”
    He laughed and the sound boomed in the near-empty room. Then he said, “So, how are ya?”
    “I’m a Buffalo cop. What else can I say? My dreams have finally come true.”
    “And I’m a bartender. What a couple of County clichés we are. Only jobs left in this goddamn town. What’re ya having? On the house.”
    “A Diet Coke. Is this payback for junior prom?”
    “What happened at junior prom?” Billy poured the drink, set it in front of her, picked up a pint glass from a dishwasher rack in front of him and began polishing it with a rag. His chin had slid back as if he were expecting a punch, the mouth grinning, the well-known dimples appearing under his cheeks.
God
, Abbie thought,
he’s still a good-looking man
.
    “You blew me off. Left me to go in the single girls’ limo, with the ugly ones with braces and Anne Muidy. You remember, the really
fat
one?”
    “I did that?”
    “Yeah, you did that.”
    “I have no recoll—”
    “Shut up, Billy.”
    He shook his head, laughing.
    “I was an asshole. Sorry, Ab.”
    “Not forgiven,” she said, and took a sip of the soda. No, pop. That’s what they called it in Buffalo. Pop.
    It felt good to be here, near him. She felt like a teenage girl again, but now she had leverage. She’d been places in the world and had a Glock on her hip. Things were a bit more even.
    Abbie looked around. The walls seemed to vibrate with memories. The paintings of Irish martyrs, the scarves with D UBLIN and B ELFAST scrawled across them tacked up to the wall, the smell of fresh sawdust and beer—they seemed to have some latent power that pulsed in the air.
    “It’s sad,” she said. “This place always felt like it was the center of the world to me. We’re going to the
Gaelic Club
. I was all excited. Can you imagine?”
    Billy laughed.
    “But it still has something about it, doesn’t it?” she said.
    Billy looked around the room, and it was as if his eyes were pinched against the sun. “Because it’s dying. Anything that’s dying’s beautiful for a while.”
    “I was shocked when I came back,” she said. “Remember the Last Chance Bar on Seneca Street?”
    “Did I get thrown through the front window of that one?”
    “If not, it would have been the only one on Seneca that you didn’t.”
    He laughed.
    “I went by there yesterday. There’s a hand-lettered sign in the window saying, ‘We sell rabbits and other snake food.’
Snake
food.”
    Billy nodded, the grin gone from his face. “Yeah, I saw that.”
    “Half the words misspelled.”
    Billy grimaced. “You know what a few of us are calling this place?”
    “What?”
    “We call it the Rez. Short for ‘reservation.’ ”
    Abbie studied him thoughtfully. “I heard that from some skel on South Park. What’s it mean?”
    Billy looked at the two old men, then leaned in to her. “The County is becoming one big Indian reservation, except with whites trapped inside this time. Businesses have pulled out, the government is MIA, they just left a bunch of poor people here, brought some liquor and junk food in and left us to … I don’t know what.”
    She felt a line of heat across her throat.
    “You mean, like on the East Side? And every other ghetto in America?”
    Billy didn’t quite catch her tone.
    “Yeah. You’re right. Maybe we’re getting a taste of what they did to